IT WAS GODDESS OF BEES AGAIN.
If she spared a moment to read Nectus' thoughts, she'd laugh. But she was more focused at another place at the same time.
A lone pillar mountain stood in the middle of an ordinary forest valley. There was nothing special about this place except its location. From here, someone could just barely see roofs of houses of the Krisha Village in the distance.
The human child was picking flowers and snails from the ground-forest with equal interest.
Above him, a crow called Woe flew in the sky. A squad of Beehounds in protective clothing sat on its back. Despite the strong and cold headwind, their sensitive antennae twitched, following the trail of smoke from human ovens.
"Down here, here! Land!" Sergeant Quietstep shouted, throwing a bait—a chunk of dried meat—toward the scent.
It was her last one, and she had to make it count. But so far, the Beehounds considered their mission a success—after the first unsuccessful flights on the crows, they caught a scent of alien civilization and made Woe follow it.
The crow saw the piece of meat and lunged forward, deftly capturing it mid-flight. It heard the shouts from its back, but largely ignored it—all it knew was that if it kept carrying them around, they will throw more food for it.
It would've flown some more, but it was getting tired, so it landed on a branch of the nearest pillar mountain, crushing a couple of bushes growing there with its paws and tail.
This was a safe enough place to scratch its back and groom its scales.
"Good enough," Quietstep said to her squad. Here, away from crowds, she spoke like a confident leader and not a shy little girl. If Nectus saw this, he'd be shocked, like the fool he was.
"I can see the giants' building from here, just like we were told. And there's a giant, too, Sergeant!" one of her subordinates said, pointing at the child under the tree.
Woe looked down, too. It was curious about the human child, as it was curious about many things. Especially since the child was holding something—it could be food!
Those were flowers, but Woe was just the right amount of smart. Not too much.
Quietstep looked down at the human child, too, and her eyes widened.
The creature was even uglier than she imagined, even if way smaller. Every part was alien to the bee: from the green skin to the horizontal jaws, eyes separated on white and black, and even the clothes it wore.
The child picked another flower and raised his head. By coincidence, his eyes fell on the crow sitting on a mountain branch, and the child stood close enough to see the insects clinging to the crow's back.
"Oh, a birdie!" it shouted, making the bees jolt in fright.
They didn't understand the words, but the voice was incredibly loud and carried for hundreds of meters.
Some Beehounds paled, but Quietstep stayed resolute. She was ready to face anything except crowds.
"Hound-Solo, return with Woe and report our findings. Squad, we are going to the ground. We must chart the route back to Hive Supremo."
Hound-Solo sighed, unhappy to be picked. It meant she was the weakest in Quietstep's eyes, and that she soon will have to talk with people outside her squad again.
Other Beehounds obediently untied the ropes that held them on Woe's back and flew off. The crow immediately scratched the places where they just were.
Below them, the human child walked closer in fascination. He saw that the insects were unusual ones! They wore clothes, just like humans. If the child could, he'd try to catch one; but he was still far below that the Beehounds felt safe on their branch.
Quietstep gathered her team around and began discussing their route. While they flew, they saw parts of it, but on the ground they could orient themselves better. The journey would be long and arduous, but they unanimously agreed that it was better than what Hound-Solo was going to go through soon.
They might even meet and direct home some other Beehounds.
"Miho! Miho!" A sharp cry of another human made Beehounds reflexively hide in the nearest bushes.
Another giant was running from the village—a normal-sized one, as far as the Beehounds could tell.
A woman, the child's mother. Panting, she grabbed her son's arm.
"Miho, I told you to not go that far from the village! Who knows what or who prowls there? All the men of the Yash family just went on a hunt and never came back. How so? Bad, bad things. Don't go out of my sight this close to the mountains!"
"But maaaa! I saw funny bees! They wore clothes!"
"Yes, yes, sure. You can look for funny bees in the village!"
There weren't any "funny bees" in Krisha village, but the child told all his peers about what he saw, and to all adults who bothered listening.
The mood in the village was tense enough, anyway. The Yash hunters disappeared a month ago—not enough to forget about it. Everybody was on their guard.
After the child's tales, a new rumor appeared: Yash hunters offended forest spirits. Tiny forest spirits that looked like bees, but dressed like humans, and probably hid some riches, because there were always riches—and didn't someone find gold amid those living mountains ages ago?
There could be only one reason it was abandoned—forest spirits! There were always tales of those, and these spirits often enjoyed tricking and killing careless people. People like innocent Yash hunters, who left two women of their family widows.
Inevitably, greed and anger sparked within human minds—enough to defeat fear.
The Goddess of Bees found it all pitiful to the point of amusement. Only humans were so pathetically imaginative.
Because of some rumors, several of them planned to search through the forest in the middle of a rainy season. They would definitely stumble upon the Bee Empire, too—they knew to follow Yash hunters' old paths.
This raised chances that the Goddess of Bees' cheating would be found even higher than they were.
'I should ditch Nectus already,' she thought. 'But… I must admit, he's competent enough. Alright… I will ditch him after he kills just a few more humans. Just a few!'